For me originally it was Fabio Montanari and Penoles' past drill results in the 90's. Plus the area play: El Torno is in the Argentinian side of the same Andean geo-zone as the 'elephant country' of Chile's and Peru's biggest gold finds. The only difference between Chile/Peru and Argentina is Argentina still remains 75% unexplored by modern techniques.
The geochem work done by Fabio in 2008 indicated two gold-rich anomalies over 2km wide which could be large open-pit mine potentials. That's on top of the 14km fully-mineralized gold vein system and the surface gold right underfoot which was being processed by the titleholder right up until 3 years ago when he had to stop due to health condition. There is more gold in El Torno than the world has found in a long time. That is how I see it anyway.
But then 2008 happened and there was absolutely no exploration funding available anywhere. Soltera had no way to move forward on these impressive gold targets. Ran out of money to the point they couldn't even afford to make SEC filings (not cheap). This left them at 5 cents for over a year and down on the bottom of the Pinksheets with Caveat Emptor status. But throughout this time of attrition Fabio kept his gem, El Torno. He also came up with a plan to survive and thrive...
Fabio managed to negotiate gaining the surface mining rights and ownership of the gold gravity concentration plant away from the titleholder in exchange for 10% of gold production on the elluvial deposit. That negotiation took over 8 months to achieve. But as anyone knows, getting mining rights normally takes longer when you have to go through all the government hoops. Soltera and its shareholders could see the light at the end of the global financial crisis tunnel. The plan was to get the plant into full gold production by the end of 2010. But then something even better happened... GOLDLAKE.
Goldlake, owned by family that is Italy's 3rd largest cement company with over $1B in annual business, has a $10M 'ethical gold' supply deal with Cartier Jewelers. They contacted Fabio to see if they could finance not just the elluvial production at El Torno but also the first $5M needed to prove up the vein system and the new open-pit targets. Why? Because it just so happens that the gold at El Torno is 'free gold' ideal for ethical gold production since it needs no mercury nor cyanide to extract it. Goldlake has so far invested $500,000 at 10cents and if the testwork (now completed and awaiting lab results) proves successful then they will be exercising warrants at 15cents to place an additional $5.5M into Soltera.
So one of the best geologists (read about him) with one of the richest gold projects, after two years of dropping in stock value, now has a Billion Dollar backer and the test results to seal the deal are due by Christmas.
Who could ask for a better situation than this one? I rest my case Your Honor. lol
